Bloomberg has a piece on how the taste for art collections among the rich is dictating the design of new buildings. “Every grand room now needs at least one art wall,” says developer Joe McMillan in Mark Ellwood’s excellent piece.

Here Ellwood tells the story of a sale Wendy Maitlan recently made:

The clincher for her client was a second opinion from someone he trusted—but it wasn’t his life partner, an interior decorator, or even a feng shui master. It was his art consultant.

“We sent her CAD drawings, and she went to [the house in] Connecticut to inventory and measure everything. She checked the ceiling heights, the volume, and the wall space,” explains Maitland by phone from her office in New York City, “Every space in the apartment had to be approved by the art consultant.”

It wasn’t a request that fazed Wendy—in fact, she wasn’t even surprised. It’s becoming increasingly essential in new luxury developments to engineer them expressly as art-friendly spaces. The new rule in this art-loving world can be summed up simply: more walls, fewer windows.

Forget the Loft: The Newest Trend in Luxury Real Estate Is Walls (Bloomberg Business)